My first instinct was to laugh... But seriously -this sort of behavious jeopardizes the availability of lenses for handling at trade shows and should be deplored.

Now that's out of the way, Sigma state that there were two pre-production lenses in existence; which mount was the one that was stolen? If it was Sigma SA mount, then it shouldn't be too hard to find the culprit; I would get the police to interview both suspects.

Well whoever stole it most probably has been filmed, and if it was so crowded that is difficult to see what happened, then EXIF data will show if that person forgets to hide EXIF each time he publishes something.Beside selling it is gonna be easily detectable.Not a smart move, and it ruins the spirit of CES!

Come on... Someone forgot his preproduction iphone in a bar... Sigma lost a lens... If there shows up a Detailed review in the next time its just viral advertisment

Milking it for all they can would certainly get enough free publicity to make the loss of the lens easier to bear. Wouldn't surprise me if someone lost a lens at the next trade show either.

What I can't understand is that they're not exactly vocal about what's happened - tweets (they do tweet), an entry in the news/featured items on their webpage, a facebook page devoted to recovering the lens & including CCTV stills of the chap making off with it etc would keep all the magazines and websites in a frenzied Sigma-coverage....

juwi

I could actually imagine that someone just left it on the body accidentally. When I was at their Cebit booth last year and they just had the lenses sitting there I took the time and tried out some that interested me and nearly left with their 105mm Macro instead of the 70mm I came with. The difference in size and weight isn't big, so one doesn't necessarily notice it. If the thief came with a lens of similar size and weight like a 70-200.... On the other hand Sigma would probably have a "new" "surplus" lens if that is how it happened.

My first instinct was to laugh... But seriously -this sort of behavious jeopardizes the availability of lenses for handling at trade shows and should be deplored.

The possibility somebody will steal a lens means that the lenses must be watched; if you don't allow lenses to be played with you might as well fold up the trade show and forget about it.

To me, this possibly signals a key difference in the atmosphere and intention of CES and photographer shows - CES is more about "look at our locked-down demo" (E3 is especially guilty of this, you just walk into a theater and watch a canned demo reel in many cases, and hope the final project will look vaguely like what you're seeing onscreen!) and photography shows are more about actually being able to look and use.

It's not that the CES crowd is worse, but they probably are more repressed due to the increased number of canned demos, and the necessary diversity of types of technology around means that it is probably also harder for an attendee to judge whether another attendee's behavior is appropriate.

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Now that's out of the way, Sigma state that there were two pre-production lenses in existence; which mount was the one that was stolen? If it was Sigma SA mount, then it shouldn't be too hard to find the culprit; I would get the police to interview both suspects.

They do not draw up a list of the last people to handle the lenses at a busy trade show. They will have to rely on security camera footage, if it exists, and this is why the booth staff and other attendees ought to watch what everybody else is doing. Hopefully the time of the next CES or PMA people will be more attentive to sneaky thievery.